


Hold Still

by Pemm, PreludeInZ



Series: First, Do No Harm [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In that last afternoon your boyish heart broke.<br/>The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke.<br/>The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke.</p><p>—THE BRONCHO THAT WOULD NOT BE BROKEN, Vachel Lindsay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Medic

**Author's Note:**

> I always try to let my stories speak for themselves, but this one needs a little explanation.
> 
> For a very long time I'd been entertaining the idea of writing something examining an ugly, abusive (non-sexual, non-romantic) relationship between Scout and Medic. I finally decided to get it out of my system and post short updates whenever I felt like it to my Tumblr, with little to no editing, planning, or research. It takes liberties with the canon and doesn't always explain them. It was meant to be a short, self-indulgent jaunt, because writing awful, codependent relationships is very interesting to me, and I wanted a project that was less intensive than my TIAS series is.
> 
> I did not intend for it to turn into 15k words, receive not only fanfiction but a fan-written epilogue that I wound up canonizing, or for that epilogue to result in a collaborative effort to repair what _Hold Still_ had done. But that's what happened! And it is kind of awesome.
> 
>  _Hold Still_ is not a pleasant story. It is also an unbetaed, unedited, unresearched one, by intent, and so if you encounter inconsistencies or mistakes, I ask you to excuse them. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy the ride!
> 
> —Pemm

“For the tenth time, _hold still_.”

Scout didn’t have much of a choice: the Medic had grabbed him by the chin and forced his head up, pulling his bottom lip down and inspecting his teeth like he was a horse or something. Their faces were too close together. The old bastard’s breath was warm and sour on his nose and it made his skin crawl. After a few more seconds of jerking Scout’s head around, Medic raised one eyebrow. “I see three cracked teeth. What did you do, try to catch a rocket with them?”

Rocket nothing. His mouth hurt a little, okay, and it was dusty with endless Badlands dirt, didn’t give Medic no reason to go jamming his hands in there.

He finally let go, and Scout ripped away, stumbling backwards to rub his jaw with his left hand. “Shit, what the hell, no I didn’t, I been fightin’ the other scout. Don’t frickin’ get up in my face like that okay I just need you t’fix my wrist.” Specifically the right one, currently hanging limp and useless at his side. The fingers were curled awkwardly, and there was an angle to the rapidly-rising swelling that shouldn’t have been there. “Do your freakin’ doctor magic, c’mon!”

“It is called ‘medicine’,” Medic said dryly, catching him by the arm and forcing him still again. “My medigun cannot fix this. I can splint it, if you like. But if you want it immediately back you will have to respawn.”

“Can’t, can’t fix my wrist, what the hell does can’t mean, I seen you put that thing on Demo with his leg blown off and it grew back—“

“Because it was entirely gone. And he was in agony for the entire time it took, and then the leg was weak. He respawned himself to get rid of it the next day, do you not remember this?” He let go of Scout’s arm and folded his own across his chest. “It is still experimental! It can rebuild a leg from scratch but it will not knit bone together. Not in any of my trials, at least.”

“Respawn takes a goddamn hour and then you’re sick for two! I gotta get back in there _now_ , man, just use the freakin’ thing on me anyway! You’re bein’ paranoid.”

Medic’s face set. God help him, if he said no Scout was going to throw his bat at him. But a few seconds passed in silence. Medic tilted his head up, just a few degrees. “Very well,” he said, reaching for the firehose-thing that the medigun focused itself out of. “But I have warned you.”

Scout got no time to brace himself. Medic pointed the nozzle at his broken wrist and pushed the lever forward, sending bright red light gushing out of it. It hit Scout’s wrist and seemed to stick there, feeling warm and electric.

At first he felt nothing, and was about to say as much when a twinge shot up his arm. He leapt back and hit the side of the logging shed, but the beam would not be shaken off. A hot, prickling sensation crept over his skin, like static electricity, and at the same time a sharp cold started to saturate his veins—almost like Medic had stuck a needle of old blood into him.

Something in his wrist felt like it popped, and he would have sworn he saw something move under his handwraps. Pain seared his nerves. “Sh, shit, t—turn it off, fuck, I changed my mind, Medic—“

Scout looked up. Medic was not even looking at him—no, he was looking at Scout’s wrist and the sluggish beams around it. He was closer than he had been a minute ago, too. Anything else Scout might have noticed was thrown aside as his wrist bones seemed to twist inside his skin, and he tried to jerk his arm away again with a harsh cry. “Turn it off!”

That got Medic’s attention. He ripped his gaze away to stare flatly at Scout, hand never leaving the medigun’s lever. “Oh, grow up. I did warn you.”

“Wh—Doc—“

“Shh!” Medic said, and pushed the lever further forward.

Lightning lurched through Scout’s arm and he doubled over, too stunned and blinded with pain to make a sound. It seemed like a very long time later when the hum of the medigun finally died. The sticky red lights faded into nothing, and Scout was slumped against the shed and sucking in his breath in scratchy sandpaper breaths.

Before he could say anything, before he could cuss Medic out or punch him or anything, Medic had seized his arm and yanked it up to eye level. Scout yelped, high-pitched and pathetic.

Medic was unbothered. He stood squinting at his wrist, scrutinizing it in a way that reminded Scout of how his mother used to examine cuts of meat at the butcher’s. He was silent another few seconds before a vast grin broke out over his face, showing off as many of his teeth as was possible. “The swelling is gone,” he announced, and pinched Scout’s wrist between his thumb and forefinger hard. Scout made another shrill, pained sound, at last jerking his arm away.

“That freakin’ hurts!”

“But it is no longer broken,” Medic said, his grin never fading. “Fascinating. Fascinating! You have proven yourself useful at last. Go now, do ... whatever it is you do. I must conduct further tests.”

Not even Scout could have managed to get a word in edgewise with the speed at which Medic slung his weapon over his shoulder and darted off toward the sounds of fighting. Scout watched him go, panting with an intense, sudden exhaustion and still clutching his wrist to his chest.


	2. Pyro

"I’d avoid Medic tonight if I were you," Engineer said to Sniper that evening, as they all trekked back inside the RED base. "He’s in a right old mood."

Just behind them, Scout started listening. He listened for a whole two seconds before he shouldered his way in between them. Over Engineer’s offended grunt and Sniper’s muttered objection, Scout said, “Mood, what kinda mood?”

"Real sour," Engineer said after a moment. "Ain’t too sure why. Think somethin’ maybe ain’t workin’ on that medicine-beam of his."

"What, no, nah, old quack used it on me today, hurt like hell but it worked." He held up his wrist. "Broke my wrist up real good but it’s fine now. I mean it’s kinda numb but it’s gettin’ better."

"I thought that thing couldn’t do that," Sniper said, raising an eyebrow as Engineer squinted at Scout’s wrist. "He wouldn’t use it on me when I broke my rib the other day. Somethin’ about it not bein’ able to find where the problem was."

"Yeah, said the same thing when we were discussin’ implementin’ the thing into my dispensers." Engineer reached out and took Scout’s arm, pulling up his goggles to get a better look at it. "Said the most it can do right now is bring down swelling and fix bruises, or regrow things, an’ even that don’t work right sometimes. You sure it was broken?"

Scout snorted and pulled his arm away. “I know what a freakin’ busted wrist feels like. So why’s Medic pissy?”

A moment of silence. Engineer shrugged. Sniper said, “You know, I heard him talkin’ to Pyro earlier. Askin’ him if he’d got anything needed healed. Sounded pretty excited. Y’might ask him.”

 

* * *

 

It was always a trick, tracking Pyro down after hours if he wasn’t with the rest of the team. Some days he’d disappear into the woods (they’d been making bets on how long it would take him to burn _this_  forest down), others he would hide away in the old cellar he and Engineer shared as a workshop. Once in a while he seemed to vanish from the base entirely, and no one ever saw him leaving or coming back.

Tonight, however, Scout found him flat on his back on the fat tire swing he and Demoman had rigged up for the hell of it a few weeks ago. “Yo hey fire chief!”

Pyro jerked his head up, stared at Scout for a few seconds, then dropped it back down and waved instead. “Hhy, Skhout.”

Latching onto the chains on the swing, Scout jumped up onto the side, nearly sending Pyro straight off the end. “Hhy!” Pyro said again, thumping him in the leg even as he scrabbled to grab the chain opposite. “Whht thh’hll, mhan—”

"Hey maybe I wanna swing too okay, chill out." Pyro made an exasperated sound and smacked him in the knee again. "Yeah, yeah. Whatcha doin’ out here anyway?"

"Hanging out," Pyro said as he reached up to haul the mask off his face. He dragged his fingers through the scruff on his chin and shook himself, squinting up at Scout. He was the most generic-looking person Scout had ever seen, feature-wise, but it was an easy thing to miss under his pink-white skin and snowy-blond hair. Huge swathes of dark freckles cutting across his face made it even more difficult. "Bored. What are you doing?"

"Eh y’know, nothin’, nothin’ to do around here. Hey, you talk to Medic any today? Engie said he was all mad over somethin’."

Pyro frowned. “Yeah, he came and was asking if I’d broken anything. Being creepy about it. Medic’s always creepy, though.”

"You’re tellin’ me," Scout snorted. "So what happened?"

With a shrug, Pyro pulled off his glove and rolled up his sleeve. A messily-tied splint on his forearm became apparent. “He tried his medigun on it. Got real frustrated when nothing happened, it just kind of hurt and went numb. Slapped this on me and walked away without saying nothing else.”

"Huh. Weird."


	3. Lockjaw

Medic’s bonesaw was an antique, so old the team had never quite decided if the red tint to its teeth was old bloodstains or rust. When asked, Medic would only smile.

Scout had not intended to find out first-hand.

He had been catching his breath from beating down the BLU pyro hand-to-hand when it happened. It lay in a heap on the dusty ground, leaking blood from under its mask, and for a few seconds he had forgotten it hadn’t been alone. That lasted only seconds: just feet away Medic ripped his saw from the enemy engineer’s throat in a vicious arc, and on the backswing the blade bit deep into Scout’s bicep. Squalling, he leapt aside and tripped over the pyro’s body in the same moment the engineer hit the ground with a gurgle. Scout landed square on his ass, clutching his arm. “Shit! Freakin’ hell man watch where you’re swingin’ that thing goddamn!”

His hand still tight around the saw’s handle, Medic at first seemed to ignore him. He remained terse and tense, as if expecting the engineer to get back up. Seconds passed. Scout had started pulling off his left handwrap by the time his teammate relaxed and turned to him. Medic peered down at him over his pince-nez. “What on earth are you doing?”

"Stoppin’ the blood, I thought you was a doctor, damn." Scout put one end in his teeth and started to bind the cloth around his arm. "Don’t freakin’ hit _m_ e next time, okay."

Medic squinted at him a few seconds longer before finally looking at his saw. “Ah,” he said. “That is going to get infected.”

"Yeah an’ how do you know that."

"Have you ever seen this thing?" Medic said, waving the saw at him. "It is covered in rust. And then there is the fact that someone else’s blood was still on it when it struck you. Blood poisoning is a very unpleasant way to go, you know."

"Then I’ll freakin’ respawn myself later, we got a job t’do, c’mon." He was just about to tie the bandage off when a red-gloved hand took hold of his arm, ripping the cloth away. "What the fu—"

"Be still," Medic said, hauling his medigun up from his waist and pointing it at his arm. Before Scout could get out another word he had turned it on, sending the red lights up against his arm. A shock of cold seeped in through the wound, but Scout didn’t pull away, as much as his instincts wanted him to. It had worked yesterday, why not again?

The lights sunk into him. The pain did not worsen like it had yesterday—it didn’t improve, either. Instead it felt like it dispersed, fanning out through his whole arm instead of focusing on the torn skin and muscle. At first nothing else seemed to happen. Then, all at once, the wound began to close. It was nothing short of eerie, watching it. “There,” Medic said a few seconds after it had disappeared, and shut off the nozzle. “Better, yes?”

"Uh, yeah, yeah. Cool, thanks."

His arm still ached—phantom pain, he figured—but it was more than good enough to go. Scout grabbed his bat and got to his feet, but Medic stayed crouched on the ground, looking down pensively at the machine he held. “Lacerations _and_  fractures,” he murmured, “but…”

Scout decided to leave before anything else could happen.

 

* * *

 

His arm felt better. Not much else did.

The next morning Scout awoke scarcely able to move his neck, and just getting out of bed and dressed took three times as long as it normally did thanks to that. It was a Saturday, at least, so thank God for that.

He dragged himself to the kitchen, though his appetite had gone missing. If nothing else he could swipe some of Sniper’s shitty coffee. His neck was still killing him, and one side of his mouth had started twitching now and then. When he rounded the corner into the kitchen, the first thing he saw was Demoman, slouched in his chair and looking suspiciously into his mug. To the side, Sniper was frying something, and true to form Pyro was lurking next to him, his eyes locked on the flame beneath the pan. Out of them it was Demo that noticed Scout first. “Well, look what the cat dragged in! You look like hell, lad.”

"Whatever," Scout muttered, dropping down into the chair across from him and leaning heavily on the table. "Yo, Snipes, make me some’a whatever that is."

"Make your own," Sniper said, turning off the element. It broke Pyro from his trance. He shook himself, and before Sniper could stop him reached out with the gloved hand of his unsplinted arm and plucked two pieces of bacon right off the pan. "Hey—"

"Sharing’s caring," Pyro said, ducking out of reach. He trotted over to the table and sat down next to Scout, holding half of his spoils out. Scout nabbed it with a "thanks, man" and immediately dropped it onto the table again, cussing and shoving his burnt fingers into his mouth. Watching him, Pyro tilted his head a little to one side. "Hey, Demo’s right."

"Nnnh?"

"You do look like shit. What’s the deal?"

"I don’t freakin’ know, I woke up like this," Scout mumbled, trying to pick up the bacon with his nails and failing. "Can’t move my damn head. And my face keeps twitchin’."

"Hang on now," Sniper said from where he’d settled down next to Demo. He studied Scout for a long few seconds, tapping his chin. "That don’t look good, mate."

Scout rolled his eyes, finally managing to pick up the bacon and taking a bite. “Yeah, well neither do you.”

"No, I mean it. Looks kinda like lockjaw, me dad got that once. Not pretty. You ought to talk to Medic, I think."

"Lockjaw?" Scout said, mouth full. "It’s just a stiff neck, cripes—"

A vicious muscle spasm jerked his shoulders up. It made the half-chewed bacon leap out of his mouth and then reached throughout his whole face, clamping his teeth down on his tongue. His yowl cut through the morning stillness even after he got control of his jaw back. He clapped both hands over his mouth and whined, eyes screwed up in pain. “Fuck!”

Next to him, he heard Pyro swear under his breath. On the other side of the table, Sniper nodded. “Lockjaw.”


	4. Respawn

For the second time in three days (which was two times too many, thanks), Medic was up in Scout’s face. Literally. This time he’d taken a grip on his jaw and was turning his head this way and that, probing with cold fingers. The rest of the team had crowded into the kitchen to gawk at him.

"I do not understand," Medic muttered, after he’d about jammed his fingers down Scout’s throat. "This is tetanus. Have you been cut with any other rusted metal this week?"

"No, just your freakin’ saw from yesterday, getcha hands outta my face."

"Impossible. Tetanus does not incubate so quickly." At last Medic let go, allowing Scout to rub at his sore jaw and grumble. His eyes fell on Scout’s arm, just for a moment. "If it were my saw it would have taken at least a week to manifest. Your symptoms are advanced, this did not happen overnight."

"I was fine yesterday—God, whatever, fine, maybe I did, can y’just fix it?"

"No. You will have to respawn if you wish to be rid of it." At Scout’s exasperated glare Medic waved him off. "There is no cure! You may either wait for it to wear off or respawn. And I have none of the medicine that would make the wait bearable even if you were not obliged to be working."

Scout almost said something, but another spasm ripping through his neck and face kept his mouth shut tight.

 

* * *

 

"Fuckin’ hate respawn," Scout muttered through clenched teeth. His teeth likely would have been clenched anyway, but the lockjaw or tetanus or whatever the hell it was had beaten him to it in just the last twenty minutes, twisting his face into a forced half-smile Pyro assurred him was absolutely ghoulish.

Speaking of Pyro, he looked at Scout sympathetically as he helped him down the hall that lead outside, toward the dusty Badands where the dirt soaked up blood daily. “I know,” he said, “but Sniper told me his dad almost starved to death ‘cuz he waited so long to get treated. That’d be worse.”

Scout grunted, and lost his balance again as another spasm coursed  through his legs. Pyro caught him before he could knock his face on the ground a second time. Didn’t keep his leg from cramping up, though. “Shit, shit ow friggin’ goddamn stupid headcase quack doctor—”

"Relax, buddy," Pyro said, slinging Scout’s arm over his shoulders. "Look, we’re almost out."

So they were. Another few steps and they were outside, under the harsh noon sun. Pyro grimaced, shielding his face and stopping in the scant shade of the building. It took Scout a second to remember why: he wasn’t wearing his mask. He struggled to his feet, pushing off of Pyro, and dragged his sorry ass into the sunlight himself. “You okay by yourself?” Pyro asked.

"I’m just puttin’ a damn gun in my mouth, geez, you don’t gotta come get sunburned over it."

"Can you even open your mouth that wide? You’ve been talking through your teeth the whole way down."

Scout was about to tell him what, of course he could, shooting yourself wasn’t that hard, but when he tried to open his mouth to prove it his jaw wouldn’t cooperate. Pyro sighed good-naturedly as Scout cussed and grumbled, and pulled Scout’s pistol out from where he’d put it in his belt as they passed the lockers. “Hold still, I’ll do it.”

"I don’t need—"

"Yeah you do, ninny," Pyro said, and shot him in the head.

 

* * *

 

Scout had once asked Engineer to describe respawn to him, back when he’d just joined the team and had never died even once (a weird thing to think about, now). Engineer had settled back in his seat, looking off into the Badlands sunset, and made a ponderous, tired kind of sound. “You know what I mean when I say ‘purgatory’?”

"What, yeah, yeah I do, I’m Catholic, what’s that got t’do with anythin’?"

"I ain’t much a religious man, but if there is such a thing, I’m guessin’ respawn is an awful lot like it." He paused. "Maybe it’s the same place, heck. It’s not a nice spot to be, is what I’m sayin’. You can’t see nothin’, can’t hear nothin’. You can’t perceive a damn thing, an’ it don’t feel like there’s any time passin’. So you’re just … floatin’. Forever, it feels like, a lot longer than any man should. It’s not somewhere you want to be if you can help it. It ain’t natural." He would say no more when Scout pressed him, saying he would find out for himself soon enough.

He’d been right, too. The very next day Scout bled to death from an explosion that took his right arm and a good chunk of his side in a remote part of the field. It had taken nearly an hour, an isolated, terrified, agonizing hour, and even though it was actually one of the less hideous deaths on his record it was the one that haunted his dreams the most.

When respawn spat him out he couldn’t go back into the fighting for a full two days, and on the third it took Heavy bodily dragging him out to get him to try again. (Later Pyro had said nearly everyone else on the team had had a similar reaction, and that Engineer was right: it wasn’t natural at all.)

Respawn wasn’t anything like the purgatory Scout had been taught about. He had drawn the conclusion that if it was anywhere, it was Hell: a suffocating expanse of pure nothingness, a raw awareness that felt like it ripped away at his mind strand by strand until he was certain he was going to snap. It never seemed quite as bad after it dropped you back into the clean, tiled respawn room, but then again, another of respawn’s fun side-effects included intense nausea and confusion for a minimum of an hour afterward. It distracted from the yawning horror, at least, but vomiting didn’t get any more fun no matter how often you did it.

Per the norm, upon respawning Scout dropped to his hands and knees, shoulders heaving as he dragged air into his empty lungs. His throat felt raw and angry, and bile climbed up it, but on the plus side the lockjaw had certainly vanished. And—

"There you are," Pyro said as he stepped in through the sliding glass doors. Scout was barely aware of it when he helped him to his feet, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on one of the locker room benches. "C’mon, asshole, deep breaths."

Scout grunted, but didn’t bother trying to shake off the hand rubbing circles into his back. It was nice to have someone there waiting. The first time he’d respawned he had been alone. “What’d I miss,” he managed to get out after a few minutes. “Anythin’?”

"Nah. Medic’s tryin’ to get someone to let him slice them up with that damn saw but that’s it."

"Christ," Scout muttered.


	5. Rabies

Nothing much else happened that week, at least. Scout managed to avoid respawn and Medic both, and they trounced BLU well enough that they were reassigned to Thunder Mountain. “God, I hate the Badlands,” Pyro mumbled as they tossed their scant belongings into the back of Engineer’s truck. His arm was out of its splint, but his whole face, and his ears and the back of his neck to boot, was a shiny, painful-looking pinkish-red. “I’m so glad we’re getting outta here. No more goddamn sunburns.”

"How the hell’d you even get ‘em on your head?" Scout asked, swinging his legs over the side of the truck bed. Pyro muttered something, pausing to adjust his wide-brimmed hat. "What?"

"Medic."

"Wait, what?"

Pyro cut him an exasperated glance. “He pulled my mask off in the middle of shit yesterday and wouldn’t give it back. Said he wanted to test his medigun on sunburns.” Delicately, he brushed his cheek with the back of his hand and winced. “Didn’t work.”

Scout found he had screwed up his face in disgust. “Christ, what the hell, you shoulda roasted him.”

"I tried. He’s too damn fast."

"You gonna like report him or anythin’? I mean he shouldn’t get away with that, that’s screwed up."

"God, have you ever tried to report Medic over anything? Even if RED does talk to him, he gets off scott-free. He could sell sand at the beach. Guy’s a snake."

 

* * *

 

Thunder Mountain was a welcome break for the whole team. Cooler days, grass and green trees, and rain. Lots of rain, it turned out. It poured their first day there, and for Scout, at least, it was fun for a while. Right up until he hit a rain-slick patch of grass wrong careening after the BLU demoman, and the too-familiar shock of a twisted ankle rocketed up his leg. He was flat on his back for a good five seconds, rain saturating his face as he grit his teeth and cussed, and then he was up again—he had to be—and dragged himself somewhere with more cover.

Medic was never around when you wanted him, didn’t matter how loud you yelled. Half the time he stuck to Heavy like a parasite, anyway. Scout had to pitch the baseball he carried around in his bag (just in case) at them when they finally did pass his hiding-spot just to get his attention. “Medic! Medic what the hell you got a patient over here!”

When Medic turned the typical expression of irritation he wore on the field was as present as it ever was. It faded, though, once he laid eyes on Scout. He said something to Heavy and slapped him on the shoulder before darting over. “You again!” Medic said, sounding perhaps a bit too eager. “Where does it hurt?”

"Sheesh, you don’t gotta look so happy about it, s’just my ankle. I jus’ wanna know if you can do anythin’ about it before I go blow my damn head off."

"Sit," Medic commanded, like Scout was a dog or something for chrissakes, but sit Scout did. Medic followed in a crouch, looking over his foot, already bare of its sock and shoe. He took hold of it, gloves cold and uncomfortable, and without any warning prodded the tender swelling so hard it felt like a needle. He ignored Scout’s pained snarl and kept hold of him when he tried to jerk away. Medic tutted. "Well! We will try. You have been a delightfully responsive patient so far." 

The whole process was not much different than their last two encounters, though Medic seemed to keep the beam on him longer than before. But either way, he was back on his feet and bolting toward the fray in under five minutes. Creepy as Medic was, at least his shit worked.

 

* * *

 

 _His shit worked,_  he’d told himself.  _Ha._

Busy as he was with the whole not-dying thing for the rest of the day, Scout didn’t notice he’d developed a sore throat and a headache until dinner. When he snapped at Pyro over something during said dinner—Pyro of all people—he decided he’d better go to bed early. At least he had the presence of mind to apologize. The hurt look Pyro had given him had been enough to clear his head that much, at least.

In the morning he woke up gagging on his own saliva, the sheets plastered to his skin with his sweat. He tore his way out of them, panting and wiping at his mouth (the spit wouldn’t  _stop_ , he couldn’t  _swallow_ ), and staggered his way to the bathroom. With a wrench of his hand he turned on the sink’s faucet and lowered his head—

—his throat closed up, hard, his head jerked back quickly enough he knocked his jaw on the porcelain. With a pained snarl he steadied himself, both hands wrapping around the sink’s edge. He stared down at the running water, and felt his throat spasm and jerk, his whole mouth twitching as drool ran down his chin.

When Scout finally turned to go and find Medic, he was met with the sight of Heavy standing and watching him with narrowed eyes and a strange expression.

 

* * *

 

"He has lunged at me when I ask him what is wrong." Heavy nodded to the wet spot on his sleeve, the collected team following his gaze. "Tried to bite me. He is sick."

This time, at least, Medic kept his hands well clear of Scout’s mouth. Scout didn’t really get to appreciate it. He was shivering so hard it almost hurt, and the light in Medic’s infirmary was so fucking bright he thought he would go blind. “Didn’t Scout have somethin’ go wrong with his mouth last week, too?” Demo said.

"Lockjaw," Sniper said. "Tetanus. Don’t rightly know what this is, though. Came on real fast."

"That’s the weird part, ain’t it," Engineer said. Scout could see him studying him, like he was a damn animal or something, dammit, dammit all he was fine he just needed something to drink and would Medic  _ever_  stop screwing around with poking him and shit he’d bite him too if he didn’t quit, see if he wouldn’t, and the spit just kept frothing over his lips to dribble down and his shirt was a disgusting soaked mess—“Looks like rabies. Had a dog get that once, thing hid out ‘til the very end. But that took near-on three weeks. You don’t get rabies overnight, not this bad.”

Pyro was in the corner, saying nothing. Scout only glanced at him once. He didn’t like the pitying look in his eyes.

"Who knows!" Medic said at last, straightening up and slinging the long end of his stethoscope over his shoulder. "It could be anything. But! You are probably going to die and it will probably be very painful. I prescribe respawn."

His back was to the team. Only Scout saw the way he grinned down at him.


	6. Shock

“Come here, let me look at it.”

“No, no I ain’t, okay, keep walkin’ man I’m fine.” Scout stumbled back, holding his side as tight as he could bear.

He was not fine. He was very, very not fine, he was probably going to bleed out if the shock didn’t get to him first but Medic didn’t need to know that. He’d won against the BLU heavy, at least, after sneaking up on him, but the bastard’s minigun had taken a huge chunk out of him.

Then he tripped over one of the damn stumps that were all over Thunder Mountain. It was a bad fall, and he landed on the gushing wound in his side, and for a few seconds his vision blacked out. When it came back to him, who else but Medic was bent over him. Scout was really not a fan of this guy getting in so close all the time. “Geddoff me!”

“Goodness, stop fussing,” Medic said, sounding bored as he peeled Scout’s shaking fingers away from the wound. “Oh  _my_. Look at that.”

“Look can, can y’just shoot me, my pistol’s right there, I ain’t gonna make it much longer anyway, I—“

“Oh no,” Medic said, flashing him a smile with too many teeth. “That would be malpractice! Keep still, we shall see what the medigun can do with you this time.”

“Doc, no, I don’t—“

Too late. Medic had already drawn that snakelike hose out and turned it on. The beams sunk into Scout’s opened side like ice water and he arched his back in a pained keen. When he tried to push himself up on his arms, Medic shoved him right back down to the wet earth. A renewed sense of anger shot through him, and with it came the strength to kick the arm holding the medigun. It jarred the beams just loose enough to release Scout from them, but that was all he could do. He watched Medic’s face contort into a scowl. “You are being very childish.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, I d, I don’t want you usin’ that thing on me. I got tetanus then I got rabies, next I’m gonna, gonna get smallpox or somethin’—”

"Smallpox!  _That’s_  an idea.”

Scout shut up very abruptly. He stared blearily up at Medic through screwed-up eyes. “Wh … what’s that s’posed to mean?”

"I had been considering tuberculois next but smallpox would be so much more dramatic! But then I think my previous trials have been more than conclusive," Medic said, in a way that gave Scout the impression he was talking to himself more than anything. Now he peered down at the wound. Despite himself, so did Scout—the bloody, torn skin was slowly knitting itself back together. It was maybe a quarter as small as it had been before, and if nothing else the anaesthetic was kicking in. Or it was, until Medic shut off the beam and leaned in closer. "Actually this may not be the best way to go about this. Probably I should have used skin grafts first."

"What’re you friggin’—"

"Please shut up," Medic said, prodding the edge of the wound. Scout choked down a pained cry. "Anyway I thought by now it would have been obvious. Your tetanus and your rabies reached advanced stages overnight. I wondered with the tetanus, you could have very easily stepped on a nail, but even then respawn would have destroyed the bacteria. But the rabies! That was the revelation, you see! You could not have contracted rabies on your own, so there was no chance of previous infection. When your symptoms appeared in a matter of hours it became clear. The medibeam does not heal so much as it speeds up time, localized to wherever it touches! —Or it is something like that, I don’t know. Horology is not my speciality, I am a physician."

"You are a fuckin’ quack!"

Medic’s face went from unsettlingly enthusiastic to cold and annoyed in a heartbeat. “I believe I asked you to be quiet.”

"Yeah an’ I asked you to not use that freakin’ witchcraft gun on me but you didn’t listen to me neither," Scout shot back, but his tongue was all muddled. He felt weaker than he had when Medic started the beam.

"The difference here is that I am a doctor and you are probably in shock," Medic said, pressing his cold gloves carefully against the edges of the wound and ignoring Scout's pained snarl. "You can’t be expected to know what you are saying. Goodness, yes, this doesn’t look healthy. I suppose recovering from such a wound so quickly would take all the energy reserves you have and then some. All the bullets are still in there, too. It is a shame you are so delicate, but you are the only one the beam will respond to properly at present."

Scout had more to say. He had a damn lot more, but the problem was his tongue wasn’t working right, and Medic seemed to be getting blurrier and blurrier. His ears were ringing. Medic was still lecturing him when he passed out.


	7. Experimentation

When Scout jerked awake, cold and lightheaded, what greeted him first was the white uniform tiles covering the ceiling. There was more in the edges of his vision, but upon waking it was all he could do to keep his eyes open under the glaring light scant inches from his face. He groaned, shifting, and that was when the pain kicked in. The groan shifted sharply into a cry, and he clawed at whatever it was under him—something semi-soft and plasticky.

Pain radiated through his entire side, sending vicious tendrils of shock twining through his ribs and fanning out into his muscles. His teeth clenched down hard on his lip and eyes screwed shut again. When he finally gathered himself enough to open them and risk a look down, a shaky wail filled his ears. He was not sure if it was his.

The purple-red-pinks of his own guts met his gaze. Every traitorous beat of his heart made them pulse. He could have fit his whole hand in among them if he’d been able to move. Had the wound been so big before? Had the edges been so clean?

"Oh, you woke up."

The voice (familiar, mildy interested) sent another shock of cold through Scout. “Wh,” he started, muddy, but that broke off into another half-choked sob. He did not notice Medic leaning over him until he blocked out the rest of the world.

"How are you feeling?" Medic said brightly. Scout stared, afraid to open his mouth again lest he be unable to keep back the threatening tears this time. "Hmm. Not talkative. I see! I imagine you are exhausted. Healing yourself at such an accerated rate two or three times in an hour must be taxing."

"T, two’r three—how’d—why—"

"Shh," Medic said, and there was nothing at all soothing in the way he did. "You are probably better off not talking. I ran out of anaesthetic about twenty minutes ago, I suspect it will wear off completely very soon and then you are not likely to be especially capable of anything. Here, bite on this, you’re probably going to bite off your own tongue otherwise and choke on it and then I shall have to start all over again."

There was nothing Scout could do to prevent him from jamming the roll of gauze between his teeth. He could scarcely turn his head, he felt so weak, much less bite down. Or so he thought. When Medic trotted around to the other side of the gurney he was splayed out on and started doing something to his side, it was his teeth burying themselves into the cotton that muffled the scream. He tried to jerk away, the gurney shaking under him, and in response Medic seized his arm tight and kept him still. Another burst of pain made him see stars and arch his back, but then Medic let go, pulling his bloodied gloves away. No—not his gloves. Just his hands, stained bright red. “There,” Medic said, sounding pleased with himself. “That will do. Are you still conscious? Ah, good, we must talk. No, keep the gauze where it is, you won’t be doing any of the actual talking.”

With a metallic rattle that hurt Scout’s ears, playing poorly over the thudding of his heart and his panicked, agonized breaths, Medic hauled a stool next to the gurney and sat down, very proper, leaning casually on his knee and resting his chin on his knuckles. The bloody smears this resulted in seemed to cause him no concern. “So! You are quite sick.” Sick—sick nothing, he wasn’t sick—“Terrible tragedy. Delusions! I myself saw you run at that heavy, terribly dangerous, I even told you not to. A teammate that does not listen to reason endangers the whole team, Scout.”

"Nn—no you didn’t," Scout slurred through the gauze, and yelped when Medic prodded at his wound again.

"And now this! You cannot remember recent events." Medic shook his head gravely. "To say nothing of correcting a doctor. I am not the one crying on a stretcher, eh?" He grinned. Scout could’ve counted every tooth if he’d been capable of counting just then. "I should think I am a little more aware of what is going on than you. You were swinging at your own teammates before I got you in here, for heaven’s sake. You were bleeding out and still insisted to me that you were fine— _Herrgott_ , what did I  _just_  tell you?”

Scout spat out the gauze before Medic could stop him, his mouth dried-out and foul tasting now but freed. “Bullshit,” he got out, the letters dragging painfully over his gums. “Ain’t—ain’t none’a that happened, get me offa this fuckin’ table.”

Medic made an impatient gesture. “All in good time,” he said. “But I am reasonably sure if I put the medigun to you a fourth time so soon it will kill you. The wound kept reopening, you see, splitting—like a rotten apple, it was quite hideous, you should have seen it!—it went all to scar tissue and would not knit. I am not sure what to try now, actually. And that was after what I did to your leg.”

"My leg, wh, what about my leg?" Scout tried to push himself up on instinct, and if he had been worried before now it tripled. He got nowhere; pain lanced up his side and kept him flat on his back, gasping. "What—what  _about_  my leg, Medic, you don’t screw with those, I need those—”

"Nothing you need to worry about," Medic purred. "There were a few bullets in it, that is all. I removed them. I’m sure it will be fine when you recover. And if it is not then you need only return to me."

A sick sinking kind of feeling was settling somewhere right around the bottom of Scout’s ribcage. His legs didn’t hurt, either of them, and he felt reasonably sure both were intact. His toes responded when he flexed them. Even that small motion made the gash in his side snarl at him, though. “You’re a goddamn headcase,” Scout mumbled, eyes falling on Medic’s bloodied hands. “I don’ wanna recover, I want to respawn, just shoot me willya?”

"Certainly not!"

"Y—you got a million ways to kill me in here, c’mon—"

"No, no, no,  _mein freund_ , I think you misunderstand.” Medic leaned forward, smiling serenely. He was too close. Light flashed off his pince-nez. Scout went perfectly still, as if doing so might keep the doctor from noticing him, as if it wasn’t alreeady far too late. “It is your body alone on this team that responds to my technology in the way I need it to. I cannot be expected to advance my work without subjects to do so with, do you see? Killing you is most counterproductive. If you were not in such a vulnerable state of mind I think you would agree. Anyway it was you who insisted on beginning this, with your wrist! I really cannot thank you enough for that, by the way. I had nearly shelved the whole procedure as hopeless.”

Medic’s grin was just getting bigger.

"We have a great deal of experimentation ahead of us, Scout."


	8. Outlandish

Pyro had lost track of how long, exactly, Scout had been in the medical bay with Medic. Something like two hours now, he thought. When Medic finally flung open the green double doors Pyro leapt to his feet out of one of the chairs he’d dragged into the hall to wait. “Is he okay?”

Medic blinked at him owlishly, as if he wasn’t perfectly aware he hadn’t had to practically throw Pyro out of the bay on his way in. “Oh, it’s you.”

"It—of course it’s me, damn it. How’s Scout? Is he okay?" He peered over Medic’s shoulder. "…Holy shit. Is that all blood? That’s not all his blood, is it?"

"Hm? Nevermind that. He will be fine," Medic said, waving Pyro off like he might a particularly irritating fly. "Though I am not sure how long he will be unconscious. It was all very trying. I suppose you want him back now? Take him, please, he has been in my infirmary quite long enough. It is beginning to smell like gym socks."

All Pyro could smell was chloroform. His eyes fell on the heap of limbs on Medic’s surgical table. Christ, that was—that was a lot of blood. “What happened? He was unconscious when you brought him in …”

"Oh yes, he was out for most of it, never fear. There were a few complications with the medigun and I had to extract a number of bullets but he shall be perfectly fine." Medic paid Pyro no mind as he trailed him to where Scout lay on the table, breathing shallowly. "Once the bleeding stops, anyway. I started running out of gauze near the end there."

"Wouldn’t respawn have been better?"

The look Medic gave him bordered on disgusted. “I have already sent the boy to respawn twice. You know it is harder on him than anyone else, his constitution is that of a songbird. And to be frank I still think it is inadviseable for any of us to be using it without absolute need. What sort of doctor would I be if I killed him when I could have healed him? And anyway we won this afternoon, did we not? He shall have an entire week to recover. Once he gets some strength back I will be able to use the medigun on him again and things shall progress quickly.”

Well … it seemed hard to argue with that. Pyro didn’t know enough about medicine to argue with it, anyway. “Okay,” he said after a minute. “I guess I’ll just take him back to his room, then. Do you have, like, a stretcher…?”

Medic pointed at a dusty-looking thing in the corner, rickety-looking but certainly wheeled (and less blood-covered). A minute later they had gotten Scout onto it, and it made Pyro feel ill to look at him: deathly pale, jaw slack, his bare chest rising and falling in too-shallow breaths. “Jesus,” he mumbled to himself, taking hold of the handles at one end.

"Oh, and Pyro?"

Pyro glanced over his shoulder to see Medic watching him carefully. “Yeah?”

"Be careful with him. He was talking complete nonsense from beginning to end every time he gained consciousness. I begin to worry about his mind, especially given how often he has been respawning." He nodded at their youngest teammate. "He may tell you outlandish things. Try to humor him."


	9. Lying

Scout awoke to cold hands on his chest.

His body reacted quicker than his head could: his right hand shot out and dug its fingers deep into the first thing they hit. He was rewarded with a pained squawk, but he barely heard it over his own hoarse gasp of pain: his side exploded in angry white-hot agony. He went limp, taking sharp, ragged breaths and closing his eyes.

Someone said something. Oh. Oh, Christ, where was he, was he still on Medic’s table? When he’d passed out the fucking bastard had been doing something to his leg again, something that had  _hurt_. The gauze had been stuffed back into his mouth, a lot more firmly this time, and he’d been so weak he could hardly move. And Medic hadn’t been lying about the anaesthetic wearing off. In lieu of screaming, he’d passed out.

The someone repeated themselves, and it took Scout a long time to figure out what it was. “That hurt, you asshole!”

“Wh—what …”

He opened his eyes in time to see Pyro examining a bright red scratch on his arm. “I was trying to see if you were still fuckin’ breathing,” Pyro mumbled. “Jerk.”

“Py—oh God, Pyro, shit, I thought you were Medic.” Scout tried to relax, groaning. “Oh my God. I’m so glad it’s you.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you always?” Pyro said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed Scout was apparently on—Scout’s own bed, if looks were to be trusted. “How’re you feeling? You look—pretty damn rough, really.”

Scout had nothing to say. That was real indicative of how bad he felt, really. He just sort of grimaced and tried to shift in a way that would make his snarling side ache slightly less. Didn’t work. He winced instead, and sucked in his breath when Pyro laid a hand on his arm. Why had it been so cold before? Pyro’s skin felt outrageously hot now. “I feel pretty damn rough. Yeah. Goddamn. You got a gun?”

Pyro gave him a doubtful look. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“Pyro I got a hole the size of my fuckin’ head in me an’ I feel like I’m gonna die anyway, I’ll take respawn over this.”

“Medic said not to.”

Dead silence. Then: “Fuck Medic.”

“Scout—”

“No, I’m serious, f-fuck him, I was right, remember I told you I thought he gave me the rabies? He friggin’ did, he told me himself in there, oh my God he’s a psycho, Pyro, he just, he just wants me to be like his friggin’ guinea pig or something—“ Scout broke off when he noticed the way Pyro was looking at him. It was a quiet, worried look, one he’d not seen before. “…What?”

“It’s just …” Pyro shifted his weight, hand sliding down Scout’s arm to take his hand. “He said you were acting weird. Saying weird shit, uh, kinda like you are now.”

“Sa—of course I am, that goddamn nutcase played with my guts for an hour without anesthetic!” Pyro’s expression hadn’t changed. “Py—Pyro, you gotta believe me. Pyro. I ain’t lying.”

“I don’t think you’re lying.”

“But you don’t believe me.” Oh, Christ. And his side was really starting to tear into him again. An awkward glance down revealed it was swathed in cotton and tape. “You think I’m nuts. Oh my God.”

“I think you need to rest,” Pyro said soothingly, cupping Scout’s face with his free hand. “Seriously. We can talk more later, but you’re scaring the shit out of me right now. Go to sleep.”

Sleep? Sleep. That was the last thing Scout wanted. More than a little of him was paranoid he would wake up under Medic’s scalpels again. And Pyro didn’t believe him. What if Scout didn’t believe himself when he woke up? But Pyro squeezed his hand and rubbed gentle circles against his cheek with his thumb, and the bed was soft and warm—and he was so tired, he realized, now that the urgency had started to fade…

It didn’t take long at all for his eyes to start drooping in spite of himself. And in the end he just wrapped his fingers around Pyro’s and managed, “Don’t leave, okay?”

“Okay.”


	10. Trust

Sleep was fitful. Scout jerked in and out of consciousness more than once, but each time Pyro was still there, curled up on the bed next to him. That was good. That helped.

The next time he woke up the air seemed colder. Scout coughed, groaned, and tried to stretch only to have more pain cut up his entire side. He bit his tongue hard enough that he thought it might bleed, and blearily opened his eyes.

Nothing seemed to have changed. His bat and messenger bag were slung over the sorry excuse for a chair he had in his room, his pistol was on the shitty table next to it, and the duffel with his clothes in it still sat in the corner. His leg was killing him. And Pyro was gone.

This last made his chest do something kind of wobbly and uncomfortable, but maybe he’d just gone off to take a piss or something. Pyro wasn’t a guy to skip out while you were asleep. He pushed it to the back of his mind and tried to sit up. It involved a lot of awkward, slow movements and more than a few winces, but he managed it in the end.

Goddamn. His whole middle was a big mess of tape and gauze, stained brakish brownish red on one side. God only knew what had happened to his shirt, he probably wasn’t getting that back. Pants were gone, too, but the fucking nutcase had left his boxers. Thank God.

His eyes fell on his leg, the left one, and his face screwed up when he noticed the way the toes were curled back at strange angles. Trying to move them resulted in hideous cramps that seized up his whole calf and left him cussing and digging his nails into the bedsheets. He still felt like death. Hell and goddamn. He was going to take Medic’s stupid tetanus-riddled saw and shove it right up his ass.

The pain was just getting worse the longer he was up. You’d think the bastard would have had the decency to give him regular painkillers—no, no, that was giving a psychopath way too much credit. It was taking way more effort than it should to just be sitting up. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t _going_ to do this.

His eyes fell on the pistol on the table, just a yard or so away.

Fuck whatever Medic had told Pyro. Painfully, slowly, Scout tried to ease himself off the bed. It seemed fine at first—there was a metal post at the end of the bed, he could grab that and support himself with that, easy. It took him about a million years to get his leg slung off the side of the bed, and the wooden floor was viciously cold when his foot and its bent toes touched it. He grimaced, gave it a moment, and then tried to put his weight on it.

Yeah, no. Scout fell off the bed. Landed right on his fucking side, the bad side, the side all dyed red. He might’ve shrieked, it was possible because he was pretty sure his mouth opened at some point, but if he did he didn’t hear it. He blacked out instead.

The next thing he was aware of was hands on his shoulders and a babble of noise washing over him. He couldn’t pick out any meaning from the sounds, nor could he do much about the hands slipping under his arms and trying to haul him upright, back onto the bed. No, no, this was reverse progress. Off the bed was at least closer to the gun. “No,” he mumbled, but the hands gently pushed him back down.

“S’what I get for going to the bathroom,” someone said above him. “I’m just going to have to never piss again, huh? God, Scout, the hell did you do?”

“Pyro?”

“Yes, it’s Pyro, I’m sorry I left but I didn’t figure you’d want me wetting your bed. Are you okay?”

Hahahahaha. “He did suh—somethin’ to my leg. My leg, Pyro, look at it, lookit the toes, he did something...”

A cool hand on his forehead. “Shh, idiot, quit talking. Oh my God, you’re burning up.”

“You think everythin’s burning up.”

“Not funny,” Pyro said. Scout grinned despite himself anyway. “Look, stay here and don’t move, I’m going to get Medic.”

The grin died instantly. “No, no, fuck no I don’t want Medic, he did somethin’, Pyro he did somethin’ to my leg he’s nuts, man, I don’t want him near me. I wanna respawn, I don’ wanna lay around like this for weeks an’ I ain’t lettin’ him put that gun on me again I ain’t gonna do it I’ll cut my own fuckin’ throat first, my pistol’s right there, give it to me!”

By now his vision had cleared enough that he could make out Pyro’s freckled face, staring down at him with trepidation. Scout grit his teeth. (Even doing that sent pain shivering down his neck.) “Look, who was it told me it wasn’t no use ever tryin’ to get Medic in trouble ‘cuz he can lie his way through anythin’?”

“... Me ...”

“An’ who’s tellin’ you he’s a psycho headcase liar who gave me rabies for fun and fucked up my foot?”

“Please, Scout—“

“Gimme my pistol,” Scout said, but it came out less commanding than he would have liked. A bolt of pain had torn through his nerves right as he said it, and the words turned mushy and weak in his mouth. His breath hitched, the pain got worse, and he tried again. “Py—Pyro, please. I don’t wanna deal with this, respawn ain’t gonna hurt me no worse than this. I—I am beggin’ you here, I can’t get it myself, help me. Please, Pyro.”

For a long few seconds Pyro stared at him, chewing his lip, brows knit. Then he turned away. Scout’s heart lurched.

The clatter of metal tapping wood as it was picked up reached his ears. Pyro turned back to him, eyes downcast—no, checking the ammo in the gun. Satisfied it was loaded, he looked up again, still a picture of worry. Before he could stop himself Scout reached out with a shaking hand.

Pyro looked at it, and then gently pushed it away. Instead he stepped right up next to the bed, caught Scout’s chin, and leaned down to kiss him. It was gentle and tender and Scout couldn’t really return it because everything still hurt so fucking much. But that was alright, he thought, because when Pyro broke it he stepped back, glanced down at the gun, and said, “I trust you.”

Scout didn’t even notice when he leveled the muzzle at his head, too distracted between the strange dissonance between the pain searing his nerves and the lingering taste on his lips.


	11. Limp

Scout dropped, bleeding from a single hole in the middle of his forehead, to the mattress. Pyro exhaled hard and looked away. It was only the third time he’d had to do that, to Scout, anyway, and he kind of didn’t think the sick feeling that knotted up his stomach whenever he wound up having to look at his dead body would ever go away.

He put the gun back on the table. After a moment’s thought he put it back down on the bed, by Scout’s hand. It was an unlikely thing anyone would come running to check, but Medic’s bad side was something he’d rather avoid.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

 

* * *

 

He still had not answered that question some two weeks later. They were still in Thunder Mountain, and despite his best efforts Pyro could not exactly keep his eye on Scout at all times. He was too fast, for one, though lately he’d started sticking closer. Medic proved elusive. Visibly irritated to learn of Scout’s last respawn, he got to the team before Pyro, with doctor’s orders to keep him alive unless respawn was an absolute necessity. “Three respawns in a month!” he had said. “Good God! No wonder he is acting strangely.” And Pyro wasn’t any good at arguing. He didn’t have any proof besides Scout’s words, anyway.

That was an understatement. Scout had become skittish, withdrawn. Vanished for long periods of time. More than once Pyro had stopped by Medic’s theatre on the sly just to ensure Scout wasn’t there, but he never found him. It wasn’t until Pyro found him hanging by the neck in one of the many out-of-the-way garages on the base that he put things together.

"Okay, talk," Pyro said, getting up from the bench as Scout stumbled out of respawn, an hour or so later. Scout blinked at him blearily. "What’re you doing goddamn hanging yourself in the barns? I’m gonna have nightmares for months."

"Y’already have nightmares, everyone has nightmares," Scout muttered, trying to shoulder past him. Pyro grabbed him by the arm, only to have him rip away. "Buzz off!"

"Scout—"

"I said go ‘way," he snarled, making for the door.

Pyro stared after him until he had rounded the corner and was out of sight. It took that long for his senses to come to him and send him tearing after. Scout ignored him when he caught up. “Scout, what the hell is wrong?”

"Go away."

"You can  _tell me_ , Scout—”

"Pyro I frickin’ said—"

And then he collapsed, right in the middle of the hall. There was utter silence for exactly three seconds. Then Scout cussed louder and more viciously than Pyro had ever heard out of him before, dragging himself to his feet. When he walked away this time, Pyro noticed something new: “You’re—you’re limping.”

"No fuckin’ shit."

"But … I mean, you just came outta respawn—"

By now they had reached Scout’s room. Scout ripped the door open and for a second Pyro was certain he was going to slam it in his face. He grabbed the door’s edge and wedged his foot up against it before it could happen. “Scout,” he said again, softer.

Nothing on Scout’s face changed as he stared at him from over his shoulder. But his grip on the knob loosened, and he left the door open when he limped inside.

"He did somethin’ to my fuckin’ leg," Scout said tersely as Pyro shut the door behind him. "Somethin’ respawn ain’t shakin’ off. Sometimes it does, sometimes I come back and I’m good for like a day, but it keeps comin’ back." He took a deep breath, dropping down onto the bed. Pyro sat down beside him, a respectful distance away. "I think he knows, I think he’s just waitin’ for me to go back to him an’ try an’ get him to fix it. I see him grinnin’ at me sometimes. Just waitin’."

"So … what, so you’ve just been respawning over and over instead?"

"Pretty much."

"Jesus."

"What else am I s’posed to do?" Scout snapped, and Pyro put his hands up, raising both eyebrows. "Give in, let the creep do more shit to me? The last time I was in there he was fuckin’ with my side for an hour without painkillers. And this happened," he added, putting a hand on his leg. "An’ it was him what did it, my leg was fuckin’ fine before then, fuckin’ goddamn quack doctor—"

He dropped off, sounding like he had more to say, not looking like he had the energy to say it. After a few seconds he leaned on his knees, hands over his face. “I don’t know what t’do. I mean, shit, I don’t fix this, there’s no way RED’s keepin’ me around. A scout with a bum leg? Hell no. And then where’m I, I’m some idiot with a limp who the only thing he knows howta do is run and fight.”

"That’s not gonna happen."

"It is if I don’t get this fixed."

"Then we get it fixed."

"I said I ain’t goin’ to Medic, I’m not doin’ it, I don’t—"

"We get it fixed," Pyro repeated grimly. "Leave it to me."


	12. Keep Moving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A guest chapter by the imitable [PreludeInZ!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/works)

Scout liked Teufort. Pyro really didn’t. Scout liked movies, Pyro preferred films. Scout liked ice cream, Pyro was lactose intolerant. But Scout had killed himself three times in a week, and Pyro hadn’t. So, they were in Teufort for a movie and ice cream.

And Scout was funny and fun and not self-conscious. If he liked you, once he liked you, he pretty much liked you forever. He was a good friend, probably the best friend Pyro had on the team. And he would’ve been content with just that, but maybe he also loved him a little bit, which was actually pretty nice as well.

It was hard to find someone you loved with his wrists slit, curled up, fully clothed, on the floor of the showers in the locker room. Long past midnight, long after you’d tried to put him to bed. With the water running to spare the mess, morbidly, blackly thoughtful. It was hard to have to hold him and know you couldn’t fix him, and that he’d only go that much faster if he wasted his breath with sobbing and shaking and begging incoherently for help. It was hard to gently massage his forearms and help him along. It was hard to wash blood out of sodden,flannel pajamas.

It was hard to have to fetch someone, who was usually funny and fun and not self-conscious, from a blank, cold room where he’d woken up frightened and alone and helpless, still screaming.

It was getting to be easier to kill him than it was to get him to sleep.

So Pyro was more than willing to go to Teufort. He did his best impression of enthusiasm about the fact that Teufort’s only theatre was marathoning horror movies all October. The Teufort theatre didn’t even rate as high as B movies. Pyro was pretty sure they’d just seen a D.

Cheered Scout up, though. Pyro had been worried that horror movies would be precisely the worst possible thing he could’ve picked to watch, but the special effects had been so bad that they’d both been in tears of laughter by the end of it, and if anyone else had been in the theatre, they would have been thrown out. And for other things, besides just being loud.

And the ice cream place had had cookies. Pyro wanted a soda, because they had a real live soda fountain, but Miss Pauling sent weekly memos about not drinking the water in Teufort, and he adhered to them. Bought Scout a banana split, let him babble about baseball. Actually enjoyed listening to him babble about baseball. Pyro didn’t give a shit about baseball, but Scout invariably sold himself short in the intelligence department, and it was nice to hear him quoting facts and statistics with what could only be described as lightning accuracy.

But he had to draw the line somewhere. And if they hadn’t been walking back to Pyro’s beat up El Camino, if they’d been off somewhere private, then sticky, grateful ice cream kisses would have been tolerable, even pleasant. But in public in downtown Teufort, no. No, it was beyond just a facet of his somewhat shy, non-demonstrative personality. It was genuinely unsafe.

So Pyro squirmed his fingers out of the hand that held his, and butted a hand up against Scout’s chest when he tried to throw an arm around his shoulders. “Uh. Look, not for nothing, it’s been a good day. But, um, let’s just be careful? At least until we get back to the car? It’s Teufort.”

They were already being watched from across the street. Three, maybe four guys, smoking outside Teufort’s bar and pool hall. Younger than Pyro, maybe younger than Scout. Dumb looking, vicious. Pyro was pretty sure, anyway, as yet they hadn’t done anything but watch.

“Aw, I don’t care, c’mon. Was a good damn day, I ain’t had a good day in exactly forever. Only one thing I can think’d make it better.”

But then, from across the street, the shout and the jeering laughter Pyro had been afraid of. One of them put on a big deep voice, cupped his hands around his mouth. “FAGS.” Like a foghorn. Oh, Jesus.

Scout lit up, grinning like a jackal. A maniac grin, the kind that had made Pyro nervous before they had gotten to be friends, and which was just outright terrifying afterward. “An’ there it is,” he practically sang under his breath, and stepped off the sidewalk into the middle of the street. Rolled his shoulders, rocked up on his toes, bouncing impatiently. “Yeah? An’ whatcha dumb, ugly, sons a’ fuckin’ clap-ridden whores think you wanna do if I am?”

Scout shrugged his bag off, tossed it to Pyro, still standing on the curb. “Here, honey. Hold my purse a minute.”

“Be careful,” Pyro sighed, as the street in front of him exploded into improbably one-sided violence. At least Scout was happy.

 

* * *

Well, the cops had turned up, and they had bolted. Scout was laughing and whooping and covered in blood, mostly not his, though his nose had probably been broken and was the source of a lot of it. “C’mon, c’mon, go go go go go!” Still laughing.

Of course, Pyro couldn’t keep up with him, but they were both still faster than Teufort’s finest, and he rounded the corner just in time to see Scout skid, trip and go sprawling as his leg gave out. They were about ten feet from where Pyro had parked his car.

Oh, no. Damn it. No. Fuck. Jesus. Fucking Jesus. Not today.

The immediate and practical consideration was hauling Scout off the ground, stuffing him in the nearer driver’s side, then shoving him over, across the cracked leather of the bench seat, as Pyro slid behind the wheel. Fishtailed, tires squealing, out of the parking lot, onto the highway.

It was almost forty minutes, over half the way back to base, before he could think of something to say. “Put your seatbelt on.”

“Fuck you. No.” Scout had curled up on the extreme opposite side of the car, pulled his leg up protectively and rested his forehead against the window. For the first half of the drive, Pyro had thought he’d fallen asleep, until the light in the car had changed, and he’d caught the reflection of his eyes in the window, flat, dead, staring. Furious.

It was dusk, dark and getting darker. October. There was a sign outside of Big Rock, marking an outer limit. They’d sat in silence until passing it, and Scout stirred, uncurled a little. “Hey. M’sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Y’know it ain’t.”

“No, I mean it. It’s okay, it’s really okay. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Scout shrugged. “Well. Thanks. For today. Was a good day, I know you hate all that stuff. So thanks.”

“I don’t hate…”

Scout shoved the car door open, and the sudden change in wind resistance had Pyro cursing frantically, both hands grabbing the wheel, not even thinking to shoot a hand out, to try to grab him as he flung himself out the door.

It was getting really hard to love Scout, even a little. And if Pyro was honest, shaking and swearing and crying as he managed to skid to a halt on the shoulder of the highway, he maybe actually loved him a lot.

Enough to scrape enough composure together to get out of the car, run back down the highway, and kick Scout in the head until he died.


	13. Newton

Before RED, Pyro had gone to art school. It had been a fairly prestigious art school, and he had gone on scholarship, and everyone that knew him had been very impressed. That had felt nice, because mostly people weren’t impressed with unstable young painters, ones that had partial albinism and pyromania.

They had been less impressed when he got expelled.

It had taken Scout weeks to weasel the story out of him once he made the mistake of mentioning it. He still felt like maybe he shouldn’t have said anything, but Scout had ways of getting what he wanted and not all of them were tolerable. Pyro had finally given in one night, a few beers clouding his better judgment.

He had been on thin ice since the first week, when he got caught burning the garbage in one of the dumpsters. Something something fire codes, safety hazards, it was all crap anyway. Pyro knew how to manage a fire. He hadn’t avoided burns for most of his life for nothing. Even so, he was told his scholarship was in danger because of it, and so he had straightened up and kept his nose clean for the next month. He could still burn his practice studies if he was careful, so that was something.

But there’d been this one teacher—every student has That One Teacher. For Pyro, that teacher had been Professor Gill Newton. Newton was a short, mean bastard of a man, with a neck stiffer than concrete and standards higher than the Golden Gate Bridge, and if your art was anything other than neo-impressionism or Art Nouveau, you were going to have a bad time. Pyro had picked up on this, and immediately started aping Alphonse Mucha to great success, but every Tuesday and Thursday for two solid hours he had to listen to Newton deliver scalding, useless criticism to the pretty young woman with the short blond curls. It did not help that Pyro happened to be a little sweet on her. Her name was Jessica, and Pyro hadn’t planned on doing anything about the teacher’s bullying until one day it got so vicious that Jessica left crying.

Pyro was sort of a bleeding heart. He chased her down and offered her his handkerchief, and was very disappointed to find out she already had a boyfriend, but nevertheless his grudge against Newton had been set.

All this started around the beginning of October. The nights were getting cold and crisp there in Nebraska, and the sun going down earlier and earlier. That was good, it gave Pyro more darkness to work with—hats and hoods only did so much to protect him from the sun. It only took him three days to find a way into Newton’s office. A little rifling around in his cabinets and folders and he found more than enough to get started.

Start slow, that was what his sister had always told him. Wear them down. So Pyro started by finding his house. It was tucked away over on the north side of town, a handsome little thing. He lived alone, with two cats. Small wonder the ass was a bachelor. The first thing Pyro did was start knocking his trash cans over. Quietly at first, strewing them over his driveway like a raccoon had been at them. An unpleasant surprise before work in the morning. He did that three times in a week, and then he started slamming them over, getting booms that would wake the dead. And Newton would come out in his nightcap and stare around and swear mightily about the damn animals around here as he picked it back up.

And then Pyro knocked it over again. And again, and again, until Newton stopped coming out.

The next day there was a trap set on the cans. Carefully, Pyro disarmed it, put it aside for later, and knocked them over again.

Nearly all month he continued like that, eventually moving on from raccoon antics to egging and putting tennis balls in his car’s tailpipe. Graffiti and classic flaming shit on the doorstep. Once, making sure both the cats were out of the house already, he put the very real, very angry raccoon his stolen trap had caught into one of Newton’s cupboards (the man really should have been locking his doors). The next day Newton did not come to class. There were rumors of a rabies shot.

After that Pyro left him alone for an entire week. Was a model student. When nothing happened all week, the police Newton had called in to watch things shrugged and went home.

Being in the arts was really very useful. His sister had gone into theater and Pyro had picked up all kinds of flourishes from her, and by the same token he had plenty of friends in the theater department, too. Enough to get into the props room. He plucked a big black cloak, a wooden but very convincing-looking axe, and a gas mask with tinted lenses one night late after hours and got ready.

Almost a month of observation and harassment had given him time to learn Newton’s habits, including his tendency to go out drinking on Thursday nights (not Fridays. He had no classes Fridays, and anyway, that was when all the students went out.).

The long and short of it, anyway, was that he stalked him the entire night. Threatening messages left with anonymous-purchased drinks. Strongly-worded suggestions that he shouldn’t walk back alone, delivered via bartenders who didn’t give a damn what you asked them to do so long as you bought more drinks.

Newton wasn’t a man to listen to reason, though, just like Pyro had pegged him to be. Stubborn and more than a little drunk, he marched back home around one in the morning, and all Pyro had to do was wait for him in the thicket that surrounded his house.

A few well-timed rushes and he soon had the bastard stumbling off the path, running into trees and narrowly avoiding ditches. Not long after Pyro cornered him, axe swinging, laughing like a mad bastard.

“And you know what he did,” Pyro had told Scout, still laughing over the memories, “you know what he did? The son of a bitch wet himself.”

“Oh my God, ferreal? Oh, man, that’s disgustin’!”

“I know! And he was wearing khakis so you could see it all, it was traumatizing.”

“So then what, how about after? They catch you or what?”

“Nope,” Pyro said with a pleased grin. “They never caught me. No one even asked me any questions. Newton quit and moved away before the semester was over.”

“Wait, then how’d you get expelled?”

“They caught me cheating on the history of art final,” he said wistfully. “I spent so much time terrorizing the guy that I didn’t have any to study.”

Scout had nearly punched him, but it had turned back into laughs eventually.

Pyro wasn’t laughing now, though. He had been stalking Medic for the last hour. Medic was no Newton, no bad-tempered college professor. Medic was a mercenary—a doctor, but still a mercenary, and got shot at daily like the rest of them. Raccoons and pranks weren’t going to do more than piss him off.

No, Pyro would have to use a more forward approach.


	14. Delusions

Pyro had been stalking him, Medic thought.

He had been doing it quite well, and if Medic had been a lesser man he might not have noticed. Rather surprisingly, Pyro nearly rivaled Spy in stealth. It was quite remarkable that he could do so with his cumbersome suit and blinkering mask.

It went on for a week, the stalking. At the same time, Scout was often mysteriously absent, though Medic saw him tearing across the field often enough to be irritating. The boy had to be respawning himself, against Medic’s direct orders. What was wrong with the rest of the team? He’d given very specific instructions to keep Scout alive. How was he supposed to know if his adjustments to Scout’s leg were stable if he could not monitor him? How was he supposed to advance his research if the little hooligan would not allow himself to be utilized?

Hmm. Pyro and Scout were in some kind of carnal relationship, weren’t they? Medic seemed to remember the talk among the team when that came out; a lot of hemming and hawing and an interlocking series of “not really natural, is it?”s and “as long as they keep it to themselves”s and “good for them!”s. Medic had not really paid attention; he had no strong opinion. But, he thought one day at dinner, watching the two of them squabble over stealing bits and pieces off each other’s plates, it might explain Pyro’s sudden change in attitude.

 

* * *

 

As always: Medic had been right. This was being actively proven by the way Pyro was holding him against the wall, growling in his face. (Or at least trying. Medic was substantially taller.) “What is your fucking problem?”

"I am not the one attacking a teammate, Pyro."

"You’re not—" Pyro snarled, taking him by the collar and slamming him against the wall again. It was dark, and Pyro’s paper-white skin was the most brilliant thing in the surgical theatre where he had cornered Medic afterhours, aside from the blinking yellow light set in the wall. God only knew what it was for. Medic’s glasses jumped on his face, sliding halfway down his nose. "I know what you’ve been doing to Scout, I’m on to your game."

"I have no idea what you mean."

Pyro punched him. Across the jaw, throwing his head sideways. Medic grimaced, tasting copper. “You did something to his leg,” he said. “You’ve been infecting him with shit.  _Experimenting_  on him.”

Sigh.

With a firm hand Medic pushed Pyro off, wiping spit from his chin. “I see you have bought into his delusions. I suppose I should have expected nothing less from you. Have you had any more of your ‘Wonderland’ episodes, by the way?”

"My—“ Pyro’s face contorted. The episode at Barnblitz, among others—the one where Pyro had single-handedly destroyed the entire BLU team, and came out of it in hysterics, talking about seeing impossible things—had become something the team did not bring up, at least not around Pyro; Medic, of course, was beholden to no such philosophy. He was above such things. His teammate made an unattractive gulping sound. “Don’t you even start—"

“I would simply caution you to remember your own problems, Pyro,” Medic said, smiling glibly. “It would be terrible if you were to relapse. Simply terrible.”

He took a step toward Pyro, who fell back, hunched and looking like he wished he’d brought a weapon. “You can’t—it doesn’t work that way.” Pyro swallowed as Medic plucked a cannister of something gaseous off a trolley littered with samples. “I don’t get those anymore.”

Medic turned the cannister over in his hands. His eyes fell on a breathing mask that had been sitting next to it. His gaze moved from it to Pyro, and back again, and now he picked it up, squinting at it in the dark. “Are you sure?”

“… What are you doing?” Pyro said in a thick, uncertain voice. “Medic? … Medic?”


	15. Hide

Something wasn’t right. Well. Something hadn’t been right for going on a damn month now, longer even, but this was different. And now Scout was worried.

Scout was not a worrier. Dwelling on things only slowed you down, and even with this new shit with Medic he had managed to keep his fretting to a minimum, except sometimes on the very late nights, when it was dark and loud and his leg hurt.

But he’d had Pyro to do the worrying then, really.

And Pyro …

Pyro had said he was going to get shit sorted two days ago. That he’d had a course of action. Scout had expected to hear back from him for good or ill the next day, at the very least.

He hadn’t so much as even seen Pyro in more than passing since then.

“Dunno, mate,” Sniper said idly when Scout asked him about it. “Been actin’ kinda cagey, I think. Seen him slippin’ off to the woods more than once.”

Goddammit.

 

* * *

 

Pyro wasn’t exactly graceful. More than once Scout had witnessed him fall straight off the bed when they were rolling around on it, and he opted for the point-blank blasts of a shotgun as his weapon over the more precise pistols for a reason. So finding and following the trail that lead into Thunder Mountain’s surrounding forest was trivial at best, even with his fucking leg.

Fifteen minutes later he figured he probably should have told someone where he was going, and probably that he shouldn’t have gone at dusk, and that maybe he should have brought a weapon, just in case. Sixteen minutes later, he found someone sitting mutely on a pile of leaves and pine needles, flicking a lighter on over and over again in their hand. When Scout said, “Pyro?” they did not move, not at first. It took a full ten seconds for them to redirect the lenses of their mask at him, and fewer for them to look away again.

Oh, no.

“Pyro,” Scout said again, dropping down to his knees and shaking his shoulder. Pyro grunted and tried to push him away. “No, Pyro, goddamnit—talk to me, man—”

Pyro muttered something, trying to pull away. In a fit of frustration, Scout grabbed for the mask and tugged it off his head. Pyro whined. “Leggo!”

“Leggo nothin’, talk to me, what’s your freakin’—”

“Scout?” Pyro’s voice. Pyro’s voice, quiet, wavering, uncertain. “Is … is that …”

He dropped off, slouching. As he turned his head back down to the ground Scout caught, in the fading light, a glimpse of his eyes: they weren’t …

Something wasn’t right. “Pyro, what’s the deal?”

“Don’t shout.”

“I’m—I ain’t.”

“Are too,” he mumbled. “My head hurts.”

“Yeah well you don’t look good, c’mon, we’re goin’ back.” He took hold of Pyro’s arm and pulled, only for Pyro to rip away.

"No!"

“No, no what, Pyro, you’re freakin’ me out, what—”

“I’m tired,” he said, insistent. “I’m tired and I think I’m sick. Am I sick?”

“You’re—yeah, I think you’re sick,” Scout said darkly. “So we need to get you inside. Okay?”

“I don’t … I’ll burn everything down again … just like Barnblitz.” Pyro flicked the lighter open again, staring at it. “It’s not the right color.”

Barnblitz? Barnblitz. “… Hey,” Scout said. “Pyro, hey, look at me. Look here—fuck, quit squirmin’, wouldja. Did you go talk to Medic?”

Pyro blinked at him blearily. “What? Uh … yeah … Scout. Scout, my lighter, the fire’s wrong—”

That was when Scout hauled him upright, slinging his arm over his shoulder. He did not say a word as they walked back, though Pyro was a constant tide of bewildered mumbling and jabber. Things were the wrong colors, Pyro said. Did you see that thing in the tree, with all the eyes, Pyro said. Where were they, Pyro asked.

The only thing Scout asked was if he remembered what had happened when he went to see Medic. Pyro went very quiet after that.


	16. Contract

Scout couldn’t see straight. Partly this was because he hadn’t eaten in about eight hours, but partly it was from the sheer fucking anger that had been ripping at his entire being ever since he had dragged Pyro back inside.

Pyro. They hadn’t been together when Pyro had his first episode, the infamous Barnblitz slaughter. Hell, they’d barely spoken before that, Scout had been too weirded out by the mask and the mumbling. But he’d heard Engineer telling Sniper what retrieving Pyro had been like—he’d lost the mask, apparently, and was found staring at the smoldering ruins of a burning barn, whispering to himself, his face badly sunburned. He had whined aloud when Engineer and Heavy got close to him, tried to run. Had to be kept locked in a room for three days afterward, three days of violent swearing and crying and biting anyone who got near him.

He hadn’t tried to bite Scout yet, at least, but he was switching off between the swearing and crying pretty frequently. Whatever Medic had done to him seemed to be a lighter version of the Barnblitz incident. At least he could recognize Scout, and had been clinging to him like a frightened child for most of those last eight hours. It was probably four in the morning. None of what he was saying made sense, and Scout couldn’t get any information out of him. Pyro hadn’t been able to remember what happened to cause Barnblitz, either, and it had eventually been written off as a freak psychological breakdown.

Scout had a pretty good idea what the real story there probably was, now.

It was five AM by the time Pyro finally fell asleep, his face dramatically red and damp and snotty from all the tears and sniffling, and of course he’d butted right up against Scout’s neck, so now he was sticky and gross, too. One more straw on the pile of shit pissing him off, but he didn’t dare move lest Pyro awake. Maybe he would sleep it off.

And anyway, Scout needed to think.

 

* * *

 

Pyro woke up, and it was cold, and his head was fucking killing him.

He groaned, rolled over, and stared at the ceiling. The tiles were wrong, his room had tiles that were longer than they were wide and these were all square. Scout’s room, then. He couldn’t remember going to Scout’s room—he couldn’t …

Oh, Christ.

The memories shot back across his mind all at once, the monsters and fantastic horrors and rainbows that inexplicably covered everything. He shoved himself upright—ugh, his face felt disgusting. He made a pass at wiping at his eyes. “Scout?”

Scout was not there.

 

* * *

 

Scout was not in the canteen, or the lockers, or anywhere on the field. Pyro threw up twice from lingering nausea as he was looking.

Spy said the last he had seen him was when he was asking Heavy if he knew where Medic was.

 

* * *

 

Well. Scout hadn’t had a plan when he hunted down Medic, not really. But he did have a baseball bat, and his cleats, and a vendetta the size of goddamn Texas. That had always served him pretty well in the past.

His leg was fucking up again. Worse, today. He was having to use the bat as a kind of crutch. As he stalked to the infirmary, where Heavy had thought Medic was, he let every uneven footstep fuel his anger, every memory of Pyro looking at him with pity piss him off further. Got stronger when he piled on the incident of the previous night. A patch of Scout’s shirt was still wet from Pyro burying his face into it.

There was a light on in the medical bay.

Scout shouldered the doors open without so much as pausing, though he stopped just inside the room. A brief glance around the place—somehow both too bright and too dark, littered with surgical tools and dove shit. Scout could see the same operating table he had been on when Medic had gone to town on him, a vast brown stain where he had bled all over it. The place reeked. Medic was nowhere in sight.

Scout chewed his lip. Then he hefted his bat up into the stance his brothers had taught him, the same he’d hit home run after home run with, and with a mighty swing he sent one of the steel tables crashing to the ground. Its contents exploded across the floor, glass vials shattered, tools went skittering in all directions.

A frantic chorus of soft bird calls followed instantly, and overhead a half-dozen doves scattered to the far corners of the room. Scout ignored them in favor of swinging into another table, and another, not lifting his head to see Medic come tearing toward him. “ _What are you doing?_ ” he snarled, stopping—unfortunately—out of the bat’s reach. “Stop, stop immediately!”

Scout stopped. He leaned on the bat again, his leg hurting him from the batting stance. And he said nothing. Medic, glowering, looked over the mess. “Idiot,” he muttered. “Have you gone mad? This is no way to make an appointment.”

“Fix Pyro. And my leg.”

The look Medic gave him could be described as nothing other than intensely exasperated. “You are joking.”

Scout shoved another table over sideways, sending it to the floor. Medic flashed his teeth like a beast, breaking off into a string of curses. “I do not know what you are speaking of,” Medic said.

A harsh, ugly laugh crawled out of Scout’s mouth. He limped forward, letting his bad leg drop heavily with each step. Medic stood his ground. Scout was a good few inches shorter than him, he was shorter than most of the team. Didn’t let that keep him from slugging Medic right in the face.

A pained hiss. Scout’s unbandaged knuckles caught on teeth, and Medic seized his wrist with a grip like iron jaws.

No words were exchanged.

Medic grinned.

Scout made a sound like a wounded animal and lunged.

 

* * *

 

By the time Pyro skidded into the hallway, the sounds of a struggle could be heard clear through the infirmary doors. He flung them open and went completely still, and so did the two men on the floor.

The place looked like a bull had run through it. Everything that could be knocked over had been, and both Scout and Medic were on the ground, covered in blood—Pyro couldn’t tell how much belonged to who. Signs of blunt trauma covered Medic, while Scout looked like he was bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts from the very scalpel Medic held in his hand, the one Scout was barely keeping away from his face.

Pyro stared for only a second. Medic did not give him a chance to linger longer. He ripped free of Scout’s grip and plunged the scalpel into his eye.

A hideous scream pierced the air, and before Pyro could even think he had cleared the distance between them and started kicking Medic off. He was screaming. He had no idea what he was saying, just that it was ugly and violent. He caught Medic in the neck and the old bastard went down with a pained grunt.

Scout was clutching his eye, shrieking, writhing around on the floor. Blood poured down his face, covered his hands, Pyro wasn’t a delicate man but he wanted to faint.

He did not faint. He acted.

Dizzy, frothing, Pyro picked up the bat that lay abandoned at Scout’s side. He stepped over the sobbing Scout. He closed in on Medic.

Medic was the oldest man on the team. Late forties at the least, more likely to be in his fifties. Gray edged his temples. Pyro was twenty-one, young, in his prime. When he brought the bat down on his teammate’s back as he tried to rise it made a sound that made Pyro think of the butcher shop his father had worked at. Medic dropped, flat, no longer an easy target for a bat. Pyro wished he had his axe. Why hadn’t he brought his axe? Scout was still screaming. Pyro kicked Medic again, in the soft flesh of his belly. “ _Fuck_  you,” he said in a high, shrill voice, kicking him again, “you’re supposed to be a  _doctor_ , you psychopath,  _fuck_  you—”

The next kick forced Medic onto his side, and Pyro could see blood drooling down his lips. Good. He drew his foot back again.

He was not expecting Medic to lash out, snakelike, to grab his raised leg and pull, hard. Pyro lurched dangerously, and when Medic stabbed the scalpel he still held into the calf of his other leg he came crashing down. As he did he saw Scout in the corner of his eye, Scout finally getting back up just a few feet away, in the same moment that Medic twisted to grab something up off the floor. Something that Pyro’s hindbrain told him was horribly familiar. He struggled, yelled, called Scout’s name, but none of it was enough to dislodge Medic once he’d pinned his arms down with his knees and shoved the oxygen mask—still attached to a canister that he was sure was not oxygen—over his face.

 

* * *

 

Scout fell twice, trying to rise. His entire head felt like it would burst, catch fire, his chest and throat ached from screaming and all he could taste was his own blood. He thought someone was calling for him, but all he could really hear was this terrible ringing. It had stopped by the time he got to his feet. When he finally got his remaining eye to focus on things again, the first thing it found was Pyro. Pyro, lying flat on the ground, with Medic hunched over him, smoothing that white-blond hair out.

“I would not come closer if I were you,” Medic said in a sing-song voice. “The dosage is very delicate. It would be a shame if my hand were to slip. I’ve simply no idea what too much at once would do to him, especially given respawn seems to do nothing against it.”

Even if moving hadn’t sent waves of agony through him, Scout would have gone just as still. “G—get off him,” he said. His voice was disgustingly faint. “Medic I swear to fuckin’ God—”

“Oh,  _what_ ,” Medic said, sounding bored. “What exactly will you do, my dear boy? Attack me again? That’s been going so wonderfully for both of you, hasn’t it?” Under him, Pyro stirred. Medic glanced down at him almost fondly. Scout’s head spun, hate ebbing through every vein. “He was the first of my trials, you know. And I  _am_  interested in what further exposure will do to his mind.” He flashed a smirk at Scout. “And the two of you have really given me the perfect excuse to do as much, going off the handle as you both have. Goodness.”

It was around then that Scout realized he was shaking, and not simply out of anger anymore. “What—what do you want?” he croaked. “I’ll, I’ll do it. I’ll do it if you leave Pyro alone.”

The smirk blossomed into a full grin. “Ahh. Young love. How sweet.”

Scout felt sick.

 

* * *

 

**ONE MONTH LATER**

“I mean, they ain’t right, I think. Scout an’ Pyro? Both of ’em.”

“We all know your opinion ‘bout them bein’ together, Sniper—”

“No, no,” Sniper said impatiently, waving Engineer off. “I don’t care about that, was stupid of me to in the first place. But they been off for bloody ages now, both of ’em. Ever since Thunder Mountain.”

Thunder Mountain. All Engineer could remember about Thunder Mountain was some strange turn of events about Scout and respawn. He scratched his jaw, sitting back in his chair as Sniper fiddled with the coffee machine. Dying sunlight poured into the kitchen through its broad windows. “I guess they both been a little weird. Didn’t Pyro have another of his fits a few weeks ago?”

“A little one, yeah. Nearly burned the base down, the way I hear it.” Sniper shook his head, pouring coffee into his mug. “Didn’t bite nobody this time, at least, but he wouldn’t quit muttering. Apologizin‘, like, but I mean, them artist types, there’s no accountin’ for them. But Sc—”

Footsteps. Uneven footsteps. Both of them fell silent as Scout limped into the room.

Sniper was right, Engineer thought as he watched the kid from over his mug. Scout wasn’t right. He was … slow, now. It wasn’t just the strange limp he’d developed, though that was part of it. Too many respawns too quickly, Medic had said in a grave voice. Said he felt partly to blame, said it was terrible. Said he could perform a procedure to repair the leg now and then, enough that Scout could stay on the team, could still fight, but it would need constant upkeep. Went away after respawns, though Medic had managed to get the procedure down to something he could perform on the field.

It was sort of like seeing a wild horse on a chain, Engineer thought to himself, a chain that only came off when Medic could spare the time or thought.

Scout had made his way to the fridge. He didn’t hold himself the same way anymore. He drooped, he sagged, his baseball cap—when he could be bothered to put it on anymore—was always on loose and crooked. Now he stood staring blankly into the fridge, looking lost until something clicked and he pulled two beers out of it.

Damn shame, Engineer thought, happening to someone like Scout. That seemed about par for the course for runners, though, didn’t it? Burned out early.

Scout turned. “Uh … hey, we got any’a them cookies left? Those ones in the yellow box?” He hesitated. That was a new thing, too, Engineer didn’t ever remember Scout hesitating over much of anything. “Pyro’s, Pyro’s askin’.”

“Cupboard, top shelf. Gotta keep ’em outta Engie’s paws,” Sniper said. Engineer snorted and put his cup down.

“More like you’re hoardin’ em for yourself, legs. Hey, Scout, how’s Pyro doin‘? He ain’t come an’ talked with me much lately.”

“…He’s, uh, he’s good. Fine. Yeah.” He did not turn away from the cupboard as he said it, groping around for the cookies. A plastic crinkle heralded its discovery, and Scout tucked it under his arm. He left without another word.

Sniper waited until they couldn’t hear his arrhythmic footsteps anymore before he spoke again. “I just don’t know, truckie. It don’t feel right, seein’ him that way.”

 

* * *

 

All the colors were wrong, they’d been wrong for a month. Pyro was in a constant state of nausea and stress and bounced in and out of depression like a jack-in-the-box. Scout was getting sick of him, he was sure of it. It was his fault anyway. It was all his fault. His fault. “Mea culpa,” he muttered into his beer.

“What?”

Next to him, Scout blinked as he shifted his blank gaze sideways. Pyro froze. “… Nothing,” he said. “Thanks for getting these. I, I would’ve, I just—”

“I know. S’fine.”

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

“S’fine.”

It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t  _fine_. It was bullshit. Pyro had never been an anxious person. He couldn’t get used to being one. He kept thinking this would wear off but it  _wasn’t._  The thought of being around anyone but Scout without his mask made him want to throw up. He took another pull of his beer. The colors were still wrong. Scout’s eyes used to be blue. Now they were gray or black or white, it was different every day, and Pyro hated it.

Scout was lying on his stomach next to him, chin resting on his folded arms. His beer stood untouched on the desk where he’d left it. At least Process had rooms with beds that were larger than a twin. Pyro took a hasty gulp of his drink, put it down, and slid down to lie next to him. “Is …” He couldn’t ask if things were okay. Things weren’t okay. His closest friend in the world had turned into a guinea pig for an insane and pitiless psychopath. (And he had done it to spare Pyro, he reminded himself. Stupid. Stupid fucking idiot that he was. It wasn’t even worth it, he wasn’t worth it, he’d breathed in so much of whatever Medic had put in him that the damage was permanent.) “… how are you feeling?”

“Shitty,” Scout said automatically.

Pyro was such a fucking idiot.

He took a deep breath, and curled in closer, burying his face in Scout’s arm. At first he was certain his advance would go ignored, but after a few seconds Scout rolled over—sideways, facing the wall—and tugged Pyro’s arm over him. And they did not say anything else until Scout began, a few minutes later, “I have to go see Medic in, like, twenty minutes. Told him I’d—told him I’d be there.”

Pyro did not speak, but only tightened his grip around him. As if that could keep him here. Keep him safe.

But twenty minutes passed, and Scout got up, shotgunned his beer, squeezed Pyro’s hand, and went limping out the door.

Pyro was left staring at the wall.

 

* * *

**THE END**

* * *

 

Many thanks to my friends and followers on Tumblr for their endless enthusiasm for my highly questionable ideas.

 _First, Do No Harm_ continues in  _P.P.S. I Love You._


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